The Food

When I went to Zambia, I wasn’t sure what kind of food to expect. I was pleasantly surprised that a lot of the food they eat is what I’m used to. But their food was a little bit different. They didn’t put a lot of spices on anything. By the end of my stay there, I was craving salt. … and sweet tea. :)

A usual day’s meal for the mission team was…

Breakfast - an “English-style” breakfast including hot dogs, baked beans (with a tomato sauce), eggs, toast (which sometimes wasn’t toasted), cereal with warm milk, and bacon (served almost raw)

Lunch – usually a sandwich and an apple or orange. They had really good peanut butter and apricot jam.

Supper – rice, potatoes, noodles, or “nshima” (a paste made from corn meal the texture of flour), green beans, carrots, or “greenies” (cooked like our “greens” – theirs was made from spinach or other leaves), and chicken or beef.

The staple food there is nshima (the corn meal paste). People eat it by rolling it into a ball in their hand, and then dipping it into a sauce. Oh, and we had the opportunity to eat “kapenta” – tiny fish (smaller than your finger) that are dried whole – eyes, scales, bones… everything. They are sautéed in a pan with oil. Not too bad, actually. You just had to get past the idea of your food looking back at you.

The reason I put a picture of a chicken with this post is because that was our dinner one night. We got to relax one afternoon at the place where we were staying. When it got closer to supper time, the cook grabbed the chickens that were previously roaming free in the yard. A little while later we saw the cook carrying plucked chickens into the kitchen.

Please pray that the people of Zambia would come find satisfaction in the Bread of Life.

“And Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.’” John 6:35